"Zapping Operation"
*****SPOILERS*****
Synopsis: After robbing a jewelry store, Lupin and Jigen are forced to steal a car that happens to belong to a pair of kidnappers for the white slave trade. Coincidences continue when the girl in the trunk is both Rebecca Rossellini number one fan and the daughter of MI6 agent Nyx! Unfortunately for our favorite thieves, when Nyx tracks his daughter down, he assumes that Lupin and Jigen kidnapped her and Rebecca's in on it. Can the gang stop Nyx's rampage in his retrieval of his daughter? The agent with a license to kill has Lupin in his sight again!
Comments:
It's a comedy of errors as my favorite new Lupin III character (and Rebeccca) returns for a superlative episode that sees our favorite sideburned thief dealing with kidnappers, a teenage super fan, Zenigata, and a pissed off MI6 agent! I love episode like this that are a perfect storm of awesome, full of plenty of everything I like in this and Lupin in general. Well, nearly everything, since Goemon and Fujiko weren't in it, but they compensated.
Aside from being a super-competent, possibly super-powered, badass secret agent working for Her Majesty's Secret Service, we discover that Nyx is a family man, which I cannot imagine is recommended for his type of job. Not that secret agents can't have families, but it seems like it might be dangerous in some ways, and it seems pretty rare in fiction. We see why in this episode when his daughter is put in danger. Oddly enough, it isn't even because her father is an agent, she just sort of stumbles into it on her own by being kidnapped for the white slave trade. Nyx goes full Neeson as he hunts down the people who took Bridgette, but unfortunately for Lupin and Jigen, that's them after they stole the kidnapper's vehicle to escape from a jewel heist. Seeing Nyx go into some bizarre rage mode towards the end is interesting, and we see that MI6 has him followed by snipers should he go off the rails. We'll have to stick a bookmark into that.
It's another episode with Rebecca Rosellini, too, the famous-for-being-famous Italian celebutant that girls want to be like and men want to be with. She also fancies herself an equal to Lupin in the thieving department, and with her putting one over on him previously, it's hard to argue against it. So what's Mrs. Lupin doing in this episode? Well, Bridgette is on a quest for her autograph, and while she gets it early on, it's not her name, and she's afraid people might not believe it was hers. She spots her disguise makeup bag and is kidnapped while trying to return it to her, which is when she meets Lupin, and Jigen tells her of the connection between him and Rebecca. Naturally this makes Bridgette interested in Lupin, since Rebecca is technically married to him (but, as Lupin points out, in the middle of a divorce). And all parties converge at a warehouse where Lupin hopes to protect Bridgette from the man chasing them with a gun (really Nyx in disguise), and Rebecca nearly gets her head blown off from a poor choice of words to Nyx.
Rebecca is just a bundle of trouble. I haven't decided whether or not I actually really like her. She's definitely overshadowed by Nyx, but I find her charming, and I'm glad she isn't overdone by being in every episode. If she became the new member of the Lupin gang, it would seem a bit trite, but she's in their orbit without losing her own agency. On the other hand, her place in the narrative is similar to those "one and done" female Lupin characters they have in the TV specials that usually end up throwing off the chemistry of the regulars and I hope she doesn't end up doing that. So far, she hasn't, so maybe I'm just a victim of watching too much Lupin.
Anyway, it was an excellent episode, and that pizza Lupin and Jigen were eating looked amazing. I haven't seen pizza-scarfing like that since Beerus.
Overall Score:
4 out of 5
